I have just got back from a short trip to Wales – or a long trip, depending on how you look at it. I was there for about 2.5 days – but I also spent 16 hours travelling! I don’t know why sitting on your butt on a train is tiring, but it is! Fortunately I was fine RA-wise while I was there, even though I was visiting a friend with a dog and a bunch of mad cats that periodically had to be chucked off me, the bed or sundry bits of furniture, and even though we spent most of the 2.5 days filing.

I am NOT good at filing. First we cleared out a load of old papers from a filing cabinet, and then we cleared out a load of papers from boxes and put the ones she needed to keep IN the filing cabinet. The trouble is that neither of us are any good at filing – firstly thinking of suitable headings for things – like car insurance: do you file it under insurance, car insurance, motor insurance, auto insurance? ‘Well, where would you look for it when you went to find it?’ says I. ‘Dunno,’ says she … ‘I’m putting under car insurance,’ says I with a sinking feeling that EVERY time she’s looking for something in future I’m going to get a phone-call asking what we filed it under.

Secondly the actual physical act of filing. It’s a lot of hand movement for one thing, and my hands are rather sore this morning. Also, you know those cabinets with hanging files that you put papers in? Well I KEPT putting the darned papers in BETWEEN the hanging files so they ended up on the bottom of the drawer instead of filed. I’d only realise hours later when I went to file another car insurance document only to find that the car insurance file was empty. ‘I know I filed some of these earlier … ah … there they are, on the bottom of the drawer …’ It was biiiiig, deep drawer in quite a tall cabinet. I think this may be why my shoulders are also aching this morning.

Still, even with all that going on I was fine … until I got home. I think it’s a question of when you stop you realise how tired you are. While I was there I did not stop! I have now ground to a rather achy halt!

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My sympathies to you. OK, I will admit, I have tons of filing piled in black boxes. I HATE filing to. It is a hand killer and that is for sure. And worse yet, by the time I do get around to starting that process, hopefully 1/2 can be shredded. Did I mention that I can’t figure out how come we still have to stockpile so many bits of paper in this supposedly “paperless” world.

I know exactly what you mean about filing hurting your hands – those repetitive movements and gripping the files really, really hurts after a while. It sounds like an exhausting trip! (I was hoping it was going to be exhausting because you were frolicking about Wales, but sadly not).

Gotcha on the train butt. Mine hurts right now. Can’t tell you how many times I have run past the point where I should have listened to that internal voice and given myself a break. Live and learn, I guess.

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My name is not Pollyanna and I'm not a penguin. If you'd not worked out the last bit you should probably stop reading this and seek out a psychologist.

This is a blog about me and rheumatoid arthritis - sounds like fun, huh? Well I'm hoping it'll be a bit more fun than it sounds - hence the Pollyanna part. I'm going to try to stay positive about it and play 'Pollyanna's glad game' - finding reasons to be cheerful basically.

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